Francis Cheneval

The Case for Demoicracy in the European Union

The debate on the European Unions democratic deficit usually operates within a national-democratic framework of analysis. This article argues for a change in methodology. It follows the thesis that the EU is a ‘demoicracy’– a polity of multiple demoi– and has to be evaluated as such. Core principles of demoicracy are developed and the EU is assessed accordingly. Such an evaluation is not only more adequate, but also provides original insights: it is found that, whereas the constitutional development of the EU has approached demoicratic standards in general, major deficits remain at the national level.

The government of the peoples : on the idea and principles of multilateral democracy

Democracy is joint government of peoples. This book justifies principles of government for liberal democratic peoples who are willing to enhance the transnational rights of their citizens and accept institutional constraints in the pursuit of common goals. Unlike individualistic accounts of cosmopolitan democracy, this book constructs the design of a free political community of democracies from the perspective of the liberal democratic peoples. If liberal peoples want to govern by common institutions without forgoing their sovereignty--many have good reasons to do so--they should consider the conceptual and normative guidance offered in this book.

The social construction of demoicracy in the European Union

The Eurozone crisis has brought the imperative of democratic autonomy within the EU to the forefront, a concern at the core of demoicratic theory. The article seeks to move the scholarship on demoicratic theory a step further by exploring what we call the social construction of demoicratic reality. While the EU’s legal-institutional infrastructure may imperfectly approximate a demoicratic structure, we need ask to what extent the ‘bare bones’ demoicratic character of a polity can actually be grounded in a full-flesh social construct that is or could be acted out in the democratic experience and the self-awareness of its peoples. Ultimately, such an enquiry should help us understand whether a polity like the EU is actually and potentially a stable or unstable political form. We develop a consistent theory of popular sovereignty drawing on John Searle and HLA Hart to conceive the constitutionalised people (dêmos) as a social fact and the sovereignty of the people as a status ascribed to the people. We use this construction of demoicratic reality as a conceptual framework to understand the possibility of popular sovereignty being exercised concurrently by several rather than just one dêmos.

Referendums in the European Union: Defective by Birth?: Referendums in the EU

On the basis of a combined examination of normative claims and empirical evidence this paper discusses minimal criteria for the institutional design of referendums on EU‐internal issues. These criteria concern the mandatory (vs. optional), the simultaneous (vs. serial) and binding (vs. consultative) nature of referendums. The proposed criteria are demanding, both for the Member States and the European Union, but experiences show that the EU is in fact participating actively in EU‐issues referendums and Member States as well as the EU need to surpass the current arbitrary use of plebiscites by governments. On a broader scale the paper contributes to the insight that it might be time to fully address the use of direct democracy at the national and EU levels.

Cultural and Minority Rights in European Integration: Promises and Pitfalls

Minority protection is an important and delicate issue in European integration. This paper tries to provide some guidance with respect to the conception of “minority” in the European context. It then focuses on the existing European realities of dealing with minorities and gives an assessment of the legal and political status quo of minority protection in European integration. Within this framework, the authors point to promising developments of European integration concerning minority protection on the one hand, and to areas where the EU has to be careful not to fail in this respect on the other hand.

Switzerland as a model for the EU: Lessons for the EU

This chapter compares the institutional setting and integrations processes in Switzerland and the EU. The major findings are that EU integration is trying to achieve more political integra-tion and accommodation of a much higher degree of diversity in much less time than has ever been the case in Switzerland. Integration and expansion processes that were slower and non-linear in Switzerland and that happened in separate phases (e.g. religious diversifi-cation, linguistic diversification, territorial expansion, etc.) are all going on at the same time in the EU. Especially integration and accession with enormous shocks of diversification are engineered at the same time in the EU. From this point of view, the EU has already tried to go beyond many stages that took centuries to be completed in Switzerland. The institutional design of the European Union seems to echo quite well the federal state formation process in Switzerland. The following precisions are however necessary in the comparative perspective. First, the momentary stage of European Integration, characterized by intergovernmental cri-sis management, resembles the (dysfunctional) intergovernmental centralism of the Swiss cantons during the decades before the formation of the federal-state in 1848. Second, due to the greater diversity of the European Union, this quasi-federal system has derived in extreme asymmetries between the member states. Since EU identity is not well entrenched among European citizens (and politicians), it has been hard to design institutions and policies of common territorial protection and redistribution and there is mistrust towards centralistic EU institutions (specially in the countries more affected by the economic crisis). Most European citizens do not feel that their interests are taken into account by the European Union. Third, it is important to note that in Swiss federalism the municipalities play an important role, they are much more than just administrative districts. This city-centred and bottom up construct of citizenship is guaranteed by the Swiss federal constitution. Citizens feel that their most im-mediate and local identity is not jeopardized but rooted in and guaranteed by the Swiss fed-eral constitution. Compared to sub-national Swiss federalism, EU federalism is entirely fo-cused on the nation-state and the EU institutions. Serious consideration ought to be given to the idea that European citizenship is not only about bringing citizenship to a higher European level but also about bringing it more to the root-level of citizenship: the city. Direct democracy has acted as a federator in the Swiss context. Switzerland made direct democracy and direct democracy made Switzerland. There has been a slow and iterative process of adaptation of structurally similar institutions of direct democracy at all levels (communal, cantonal, federal) of all units (all communes, all cantons, confederation roughly between 1830-1891. To the contrary, the EU is only incipiently in a process of introducing direct democracy (in some member-states and ECI), and so far direct democracy is mainly practiced as national plebiscitary democracy. Under this guise it is seen as a threat to EU integration and probably not without good reason. While in Switzerland the coherent intro-duction of direct democracy at all levels of the polity in the long run served as an important unifier, direct democracy has even not been considered as integrative part of all levels of political integration in the EU. It is of great interest that the one element in which the European Union has based the con-struction of EU citizenship and identity – mobility of residence – has been implicitly discour-aged in Switzerland. The institutional design as incorporated in Swiss multicultural identity (which aims fundamentally at the protection of cantonal autonomy, culture and language) has facilitated that Switzerland is called today a successful multicultural society. Most citizens identify with Switzerland as a country and they like it as it is, but they do not want to take advantage of their formal right to move to other parts of the country, especially not across language borders. The same institutional design that has made of Switzerland a successful case of multiculturalism and democracy poses important barriers that make it difficult for the Swiss to move their residence across their country. Considering that one of the main features of European citizenship is the freedom of movement and residence, this poses a main con-cern. The Swiss compromise between the formal right and economic necessity of mobility on the one hand and the protection of political and cultural sub-identities on the other hand, is commuting. Due to the vast size, this is of limited applicability in the EU. However, in a Eu-rope of cities and trans-border regions, commuting is an important option provided that every European citizen lives reasonably close to an important economic centre. In short, the Eu-rope of commuters deserves attention in the context of EU citizenship.

Property rights of personal data and the financing of pensions

Property rights of personal data have been advocated for some time. From the perspective of economics of law some argued that they could lower transaction costs for contracts involving personal dat...

Migration and Global Inequalities

In this paper, I assess the relevance of migration for the mitigation of global inequalities by focusing on the remittances of free labor migrants. I consider this the most direct and least authoritarian form of distribution. Furthermore, remittances of migrants are ethically valuable: migrants send money they earned through hard work and personal initiative to their families and friends. Although remittances do not totally replace aid, distribution through remittances is ethically preferable to dysfunctional forms of aid or authoritative reallocation. Although remittances imply almost zero public transactions costs, the transaction costs for the individuals who are sending the money are rather high. Reducing these transaction costs through specially targeted subsidies and/or regulation would be an efficient way of enhancing redistribution flows to developing countries.

Property-Owning Democracy and the Circumstances of Politics

Abstract The article argues that Rawls’s property-owning democracy should not be understood as a necessary standard of democratic legitimacy. This position contradicts Rawls’s own understanding to some extent, but a rejoinder with elements of political liberalism is possible. He concedes that justice as fairness is a ‘comprehensive liberal doctrine’ and that a well ordered society affirming such a doctrine ‘contradicts reasonable pluralism’. Rawls makes clear that reasonable pluralism in combination with the burdens of judgment lead to rare unanimity in political life and to the necessity of majority and plurality voting procedures.

Multilateral Democracy from a Republican Point of View

This chapter demonstrates that the idea of demoicracy as multilateral democracy is not dependent on a purely liberal conception of democracy; it is also rooted in republicanism.1 The general thrust of the argument again follows a constructivist approach of political philosophy: the multilateral dimension of republicanism is explored theoretically from the perspective of states adhering to republican principles and willing to promote them in their institutional engagements with each other. Although constructivist, this implies important normative presuppositions, such as the universal standards that republics accept: namely, that all states ought to respect the human rights of all individuals, minority rights, and the jus cogens (peremptory norm) of international law in relation to all states, peoples, and individuals. This minimal condition, however, is very different from the cosmopolitan claim to bring all political communities under the roof of a world republic. The main reason for taking a constructivist approach, and a critical stance regarding certain abstract forms of cosmopolitanism, is the republican understanding of non-domination as the right to collective self-government within the limits of adequate procedural rules of self-determination. Republics may not be ends in themselves, but they are political entities that claim to be entitled to self-government on the basis that their citizens choose to form a separate realm of political justice, and that other republics recognize their status as a states-people.